


All That Michael Shelley Was

by Ellinor



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Angst, Angst without a happy ending, Anxiety, Autistic Michael Shelley, Canon Compliant, Character Death, Character Study, Depersonalization, Dissociation, Gen, Hurt No Comfort, Loneliness, MAG episode 167: Curiosity Spoilers, Manipulation, Panic Attacks, Spoilers for The Magnus Archives Season 5, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Unhealthy Work Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-05
Updated: 2020-07-05
Packaged: 2021-03-04 22:48:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,300
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25084144
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ellinor/pseuds/Ellinor
Summary: Michael had been fresh out of university when he was employed at The Magnus Archives. He had been eighteen, but he had not been stupid. He had not been so innocent and naive as his coworkers and employers took him for. So for years, he knew what the world really was, what they had all hidden from him, and that had not changed a damn thing in the end.A character study of Michael Shelley, and if people had only thought he was left in the dark.
Relationships: Gertrude Robinson & Michael Shelley
Comments: 8
Kudos: 35





	All That Michael Shelley Was

**Author's Note:**

> Going to be up front. Michael meets the same fate as in canon, though it is not graphic, and is where the depersonalization tag comes from.

Michael Shelley was a sweet boy. At least, that is what he was told in the past, by cheek pinching grandparents and well meaning teachers. He was always a special, sweet boy by all accounts of adults, and that was the only opinion that mattered. He grew up in a good, if not average family. He grew up healthy, well fed, with a handful of peers in school he called friends. Of course, he got bored easily. It was just a part of him.

And so Michael, with no taste for sport or other outdoor activities, stayed inside, and was still bored. His parents offered his schoolwork as an activity to cure boredom, so he did it. And did it well, succeeded past what was expected. But in that between time, before his teachers began to push for him to skip grades, he had more free time, after his homework was done. So he picked up any book he could and read. 

His mother had a small collection of dust gathering poetry books, on the bottom shelf of the largely decorative bookshelf in their house’s main hallway. He wasn’t supposed to touch them, some of them special.

When Michael was bored enough he would break one of the few rules in the very inattentive home, and he would sit on the pale cream carpet, back to the wall, sock-covered feet flat against the wall across, and grab a poetry book. He never understood them, confused by what it was supposed to mean. It was all disjointed, disorienting, not the simplistic chapter books nine year olds were supposed to read. But he read them, looked at the unhurried annotations made by his mother years ago. 

Sometimes he drew patterns on the dust covering the books’ spines, little back and forth lines, triangles, a smiley face. 

That was one month when he was nine, though, an August where Summer clung to existence for far longer than normal. After that, his teachers took notice of his grades and how well he could do the work assigned, and insisted Michael be moved up, just to see what would happen, if he would flourish or crash and burn.

He kept moving, up and up and up. Michael lost himself in his work, whatever was assigned. That made it much easier to allow himself to forget his new lack of friends, no longer able to find companionship by virtue of existing in the same place as other kids his age. Teenagers were terrifying, and no one was going to befriend the small eleven year old boy with a uniform that had to be adjusted and hemmed by his father so it properly fit him. 

Michael was always an observant boy, though. It was how he noticed that shelf of abandoned poetry books, it was how he saw new paths to complete work faster, or in a way that made sense to him. But seeing was not understanding, so even then, navigating a school full of people much taller and meaner than he, Michael allowed himself to shut down and focus on homework, and only spoke if necessary.

He graduated university at age eighteen, with a degree and everything, never even moving out of his childhood home. Several of his courses in uni consisted of him sitting in lecture halls with his classmates assuming he was the professor’s child, or that he was mute, or both. He enjoyed proving them wrong, it was one of his favorite ways to disrupt the boredom of a bad class. He was glad it was behind him now. University work was so much more involved than the simplicity of secondary school worksheets and memorization.

His siblings, all older than him, paid little attention. The gap in years allowed for a lack of jealousy, as they already had begun families by the time he was starting university, and their family had never been the most cohesive in the first place. Now Michael was starting the rest of his life, and found himself with less and less time for family, even in calls and messages.

So, tentative, afraid of the rejection, Michael applied for jobs. Not many were prepared to hire a teenager for an academic job, but he kept trying anyway, fearful of having to go back to university, and in turn having to actually interact with peers his age again, his years of having school friends long behind him.

It was a pleasant surprise to be hired at The Magnus Archives. Just a few days after his nineteenth birthday, however, he was transferred to work in the archives themselves, and that was daunting, a fear of under qualification striking him for the first time since he began working there.

In the first week, he only saw his boss, Miss Gertrude Robinson, once, and that was just a terrifyingly stern handshake as well as a brisk layout of the rules. Other than that, he was left to acquaint himself with the archive as well as its assistants. 

Eric Delano was a quiet man, keen to keep to his own work, a bit of an easily distracted daydreamer, who welcomed him aboard with a handsome smile that tempted Michael to blush. Emma Harvey was a bit more intense, and kept trying to subtly make eye contact with Michael, which he wasn’t a fan of. He awkwardly shrugged away her handshake, making it seem awkward and unintentional, but he wasn’t exactly comfortable when left alone with her. 

Gertrude was intense too, of course, but in a no-nonsense manner, with a goal. Emma just seemed intense in a way he was vaguely familiar with. 

Like she was bored, looking for something to do, anything.

Michael contented himself, glad for his own money for the first time in his life. He began to rent his own flat, though it was a bit far from work and not very comfortable. He bought himself coffee for long nights researching, he bought nice plain croissants, he bought soft sweaters too, because the archive got chilly in the winter. There was a coziness to the place though, like a cocoon of darkness, and he enjoyed quiet nights reading through ghost stories.

Sometimes, when he was lost in thought and intent on whatever task was asked of him, he would simply sit on the floor between the archive’s tall filing shelves, legs criss-crossed, slowly yellowing papers splayed around him like the fingers of an outstretched hand. 

Emma, however, was one of the few things to catch his attention outside of his self imposed bubble of work. She would look at him at times, try to catch his gaze in that uncomfortable, unbearable eye contact, and she would push simple tasks on him, more suited to where he worked before, in the discarded statements, or someone who hadn’t been working in the archives for over a year.

He allowed it, assumed it was some kind of drawn out hazing or his coworker’s way of being lazy, and kept his head down. 

Then Eric disappeared, waving goodnight to Michael one night and then the next day he just didn’t show up for work. And the next. And the next. The period where everyone looked for him was one of the first times Michael saw Gertrude consistently, more than just a glimpse of cardigan from time to time. 

Michael knew something was terribly wrong then, just by the dread in his stomach. The grim acceptance on his boss’ face was strange, not the panic or annoyance of most employers at the sudden disappearance of an employee.

And so Michael was twenty when he went snooping around the archive properly. Emma and Gertrude were out in London looking for Eric, and Michael could not resist the opportunity. 

In all fairness, he had gotten bored. In those two weeks almost no work was getting done, and so he had gotten bored and had started thinking, a dangerous thing.

Michael wondered what really was going on. He wondered why his transfer to the archives was so sudden, and he wondered why a sudden disappearance was treated like a kidnapping and not a grown man running away from responsibility. 

Michael found every answer he could want, unfortunately. The dread in his stomach curdled into a sharp fear, a rush that threatened to send him into a faint. And wouldn’t that be ironic, he thought at the time, a hushed huff of amusement leaving his lips without his permission, having just learned about Fiona, and his predecessor’s fate.

That night, Michael left the archives early, after copying a few pieces of paperwork, of course. 

It was one of the first times since uni that he actually brought work home with him, he had realized, and it was a grimace that plastered across his face as he entered his flat, a large manila folder of papers tossed onto his small kitchen table.

That night, Michael made a lot of cheap coffee, and after a while, he made himself tea, though it wasn’t as good as when his father made it back home, when he had been anxious about exams.

His coworkers had been keeping him in the dark about rather a lot of things, it appeared. 

In a hysterical moment, sitting on the cheap linoleum of his tiny kitchen, he thought of making a string and corkboard display, even grabbing the ball of hot pink yarn he bought on a whim at a time when he considered knitting as a possible hobby. He put it back, though, and simply laid all the papers out flat on the floor, the table not large enough for this. 

Statements, Archivist’s notes, follow up research (some of it his research), and, occasionally, a polaroid, though those had begun to fall out of style a few years ago.

It was a complex, nearly incomprehensible lens by which to view the world in, his world in. Like a crossword puzzle with no clues, a jigsaw that was really just technicolor pieces that happened to slot together perfectly, showing a much bigger picture that his eyes couldn’t physically see, unable to perceive all those colors that did not exist.

Michael had his first panic attack that night, and called in sick at five in the morning, and then finally went to bed. 

By the time he came back in after the weekend, Gertrude was business as usual, and he was shaking the hand of a new assistant, Sarah Carpenter. 

He didn’t know why he didn’t ask questions. Michael wasn’t one for confrontation. He could guess, and wonder, and maybe snoop the tiniest bit more on boring midnight research sessions, but he didn’t want to ask questions, not of his boss, and not of Emma, who’s hair had begun to shift from a dirty grey to a shocking white, almost translucent in the right lights.

At first he was offended at this intentional ignorance, figuring it was due to his age, his babyface betraying him yet again, but he had lots of long nights to stew in his musings. 

Michael allowed his work to slow, and began to idly glance around the archive more and more. And it appeared the looks from Emma never stopped, not in the two years he had worked there. Gertrude still shared them, though hers were far more curious rather than the simple intensity. Now, Sarah appeared to share those stares at him as well, though hers were easily distracted by what new mystery she was solving at Emma’s suggestion.

Michael, though suspicious, and now far more knowing, was still, nonetheless, a sweet boy. And so he continued to be a good coworker, smiling kindly and making small talk when needed, though he still refused eye contact, still found himself fidgeting with loose strings of his sweater, or twisting one of his beaded bracelets around his wrist. 

He made a point of getting Gertrude tea, of smiling guilelessly at her, and asking after her health. He, like the rest of the archive, acted as if Eric never existed, never disappeared mysteriously and led to Micheal realizing the world was far scarier than he ever knew.

Emma was not getting any younger, but still her stares continued, a majority of them directed towards the headstrong and brave Sarah now. Emma still went out for follow ups on statements, the one thing she never tried to manipulate Michael into doing.

Years passed like this. A detached, ever present fear lurked in his heart, and as it all piled up, as it all sunk in that those horror stories were real, he found the panic attacks coming on most nights, coming into full awareness on his flat’s kitchen floor.

Gertrude began asking Michael to follow her around the world, on long trips to places he had never had the time to see. He was excited, and allowed himself to live as if he wasn’t aware of any larger picture, falling into a caregiver role, protective of this stern little old lady.

It always fell apart by the end though, because whenever things got weird and Michael’s heart began to race, Gertrude had the same stone cold stare. She had the same mix of pity and curiosity that had been in her eyes for years now. 

Michael was twenty three, and did not think he could quit. He was not the same fresh out of uni kid who applied here. His sweaters hung off of him more than they used to, he had to slow down on the caffeine so his heart would stop racing, he found sleep harder and harder to come by. 

His hair had even grown out, longer than ever, and at this point he did not want to worry his parents by showing up after years of barely speaking on the phone to ask exactly how an Adult gets a haircut. 

The worldwide trips began to increase in frequency when he was twenty four, and he had begun taking sleeping pills, because the haunted eyes of statement givers who passed him at work filled him with the same dread that pooled in him that morning when Eric didn’t show up for work without calling in.

One of the few things that had really changed of Michael’s own volition was he now painted his nails, fun colors, one of the few small things to center himself. Bright sunshine yellow, lime, magenta, cyan, hot pink. Any color that he enjoyed, he would grab it in the shop while picking up his meager groceries or out in London looking into a statement. He would set up five different colors, and paint one nail per color on each hand. He chipped off the polish quickly, but the act of fixing his nails, painting them again, became one of the few things to stop his hands from shaking after a panic attack. 

Emma was not looking intent enough to notice the change. Sarah was worn down, dead set on her work. Gertrude didn’t seem to care.

A few weeks after his twenty-fifth birthday, Gertrude informed him that they were to go to Zemlya Sannikova, by boat. The boat’s captain, Peter Lucas, looked at Michael with the same pitying glance Gertrude used to give. 

On this trip Gertrude seemed to avoid looking directly at him.

They were off to fight a great evil, apparently, and Michael idly wondered if this was finally the time that his boss would tell him of the terrible world they really lived in. Maybe his first instinct was right, and as Sarah and Emma were past twenty-five when they were hired, they were told of these dark secrets right away.

As they sailed further north, Michael knew that was not the case.

He wore his favorite sweater under a parka when they disembarked off the ship. Peter Lucas looked more curious than anything now, but when Michael turned back and actually glared, that was when the captain looked confused, as if he were watching a game and someone broke a rule, only to not be caught.

Michael trailed after Gertrude, a duckling following the most hard assed goose to ever live. 

He almost slipped several times on the ice that froze over itself again and again, but Gertrude’s grip on his arm was bruising as she kept him steady, and the persistent fear and anxiety trilled up his spine, an alarm call, an entire flock of birds beating inside his aching chest. His chest hurt, and the dissociating part of him insisted it was due to the cold he couldn’t feel.

It actually appeared to be getting warmer and warmer as they followed a spiraling laughter. Michael could see it, like a persistent afterimage, pulsing in colors he was unable to perceive, only hear within the infinitely echoing giggles that interrupted themselves, rude as always, never one for politeness, though they so loved knocking.

A strange, imperceptibly shifting visage occupied the center of an island that did not exist. And Michael had known it didn’t exist the day after Getrude told him of their upcoming trip, he was still an archival assistant, still did his research. The heart wrenchingly confusing building, made of doors, made of clay, seemed to vibrate in place, or in Michael’s vision, or in his hearing- maybe he could taste it? He found himself unable to understand how he knew it, how he could stand so very small in front of something attempting infinity.

Gertrude handed him a piece of worn parchment, and his stomach sank. He almost threw up as his gloves could not hide how foreign the map felt in his hands, like flexible glass, or the skin of a beast he could not name, that never had a name, never was one for names. 

Michael opened his mouth, and watched as his breath left his mouth in the cold, the mist glazed with bright cheery colors, like the doors. Before he could find a word to speak, find something worth saying when one stood at the foot of the throne of It Is Not What It Is, laughter curling into the sky, caressing around the edifice like a constrictor, Gertrude opened one of the many doors.

It was the right one, and Michael knew that she Knew this. Michael knew a lot, far more than he should, but he always was a precocious child. How could he convey this in some quip before he ventured forth, because as sure as he clutched the map like a lifeline, he knew that he would be entering there, whether he wanted to or not.

This great evil could be stopped by him walking the labyrinth, finding the heart. No minotaur, nothing inside, only worshippers and the Worker-Of-Clay, all laughing but none the infinite, ever approaching source that made his ears ring. 

Michael was no Theseus, no hero. He knew that at least, facing a beacon of second guessing one’s own mind. He knew he was no brave man. Maybe Sarah would have done it bravely, proudly. Maybe Emma would have found a way to manipulate it in her favor. Maybe Eric would have known enough to have not been put in this situation in the first place.

But Michael Shelley was a sweet boy. 

Michael entered the door willingly.

Michael was easily bored, fond of proving those who doubted him wrong. He was walking down long hallways, all blank and made of clay, meaningless carvings made by long dead hands making impossible shapes. He was looking at a map, and he was not lost.

He was standing at the heart of the distortion, the Spiral. He was so very afraid as he tore out the heart with a violence he did not know himself capable of, brightly painted nails lengthening.

Michael was afraid. 

He was. He was? 

He was not.

**Author's Note:**

> If you'd like to find me on tumblr I am @save-the-spiral-again for the magnus archives, or @save-the-spiral if you are interested in my wizard101 and pirate101 shenanigans.
> 
> I have had save-the-spiral as my url for literal years, and after listening to the entirety of TMA in two weeks and having the idea of just making my TMA url another spiral based thing, I accidentally fell in LOVE with michael and helen even more than I already was. I was tempted to make this a michael lives au but I already have so many fic ideas for TMA and i couldn't take it.


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